Cover: Julian Martin, Untitled (Abstracted Animal on Blue), 2010 (detail) Pastel on paper, 15 x 11 1/4 inches OUTSIDERISM

By Alex Baker

Fleisher/Ollman, Philadelphia Outsiderism explores the various manifestations of so-called outsider art in a contemporary context, examining the frameworks we use as both viewers and artists in making sense of the impulses responsible for a wide range of creativity. Outsider, self-taught, disabled, visionary, obsessive, art as therapy, vernacular: these are some of the categories we utilize, fraught as they might be, to sort out a vast array of work which stands in relief to the offerings made by artists who are more easily assimilated within mainstream contemporary art. Thus, Outsiderism is both the title of this exhibition, and a more general term that I am proposing to describe the current zeal in which the contemporary art field has made outsider art the focus of investigation. Outsiderism features work by artists with developmental disabilities and behavioral health issues from studio programs in Melbourne, Australia (Arts Project Australia) and Wilmington, Delaware (The Creative Vision Factory); Harrell Fletcher and Chris Johanson’s video collaboration with David Jarvey, an artist with Down’s Syndrome; drawings of protest and political allegories by Michael Patterson-Carver, an itinerant artist and activist; paintings and prints by Paul Laffoley exploring complex theories through diagrams, display charts and geometrically structured compositions in which text and image are woven together; and drawings by Gregory Blackstock that catalogue and classify objects and ideas important to the artist from foreign alphabets and speed boats to flags and fireworks. For decades now, there has been spirited interest in outsider art. In the , outsider art was initially considered under the umbrella of modern and contemporary art—perhaps an early instance of outsiderism. As early as the 1930s, soon after its founding, the Museum of (MoMA), led by director Alfred Barr, engaged this art head on, giving self- taught African-American stone sculptor William Edmondson a retrospective in 1937 and organizing exhibitions of self-taught art such as Masters of Popular Painting. Some argue that a contributing factor leading to Barr’s dismissal by the museum in 1942 was his stubborn insistence on exhibiting a wildly decorated shoe shine stand by self-taught artist Joe Milone, which was brought to Barr’s attention by the artist Louise Nevelson.1 While Barr was unusually open to outsider art, his interest in it was predicated on the idea that it could be subsumed under , within modernism’s “primitive” tributary. American democratic exceptionalism could be rationalized all the more if its particular brand of modernism sprang directly from common people, if not idiosyncratic visionaries. With the rise of Abstract in the late 1940s, outsider art became unfashionable as a representative of American modernism, and was seldom seen at MoMA after Barr’s departure as director (he was later re-instated as director of collections in 1947). While some of the artists that Barr championed were impoverished or African-American or women (some were all three) many were white males that came from respectable professions who took up art in earnest only after retirement. In Europe, however, the artists that Jean Dubufett brought to international attention under the designation Art Brut, were mentally ill, institutionalized, or otherwise marginal to mainstream culture due to antisocial behavior. 2 Generalizing mercilessly and glossing over large periods of time (as this is not intended to be an essay on the history of the field), outsider art as an intellectual and market endeavor began to expand in the 1970s but only became fully professionalized in the 1990s with the founding of the New York Outsider Art Fair in 1993. From the 1970s through the 1990s, outsider art remained largely separated from contemporary art, with the exception of the activities of curators like Harald Szeemann in Europe and later Maurice Tuchman in the United States, who each attempted an exploratory synthesis juxtaposing outsider and contemporary art in exhibitions like Documenta 5 (1972) and Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art (1992), respectively. In recent years, the contemporary art world—artists, curators, and institutions—has become increasingly interested in exploring notions of the outsider. More and more we see this work thrown into the mix, even witnessing collaborations between professional and self-taught artists. Why is this the case? Jonathan Griffin offers an explanation: “what has changed is that the contemporary art world has become ever-more reluctant to discriminate qualitatively between different forms of art-making. The criteria for what

3 might be considered art—and what might be worth thinking about as if it were art—have continued to loosen.”3 For example, ethnography, sociology, and activism have been adopted by artists into what is now widely referred to as social practice; entire MFA programs are now devoted to this growing subfield of contemporary art. Thus, if these approaches can be absorbed into the sphere of contemporary art, why not art produced by so-called outsiders? What were once occasional gestures are now relatively common as we witness the juxtaposition of outsider artists alongside their contemporary art counterparts in exhibitions by curators including Matthew Higgs, Massimiliano Gioni (who is including several outsider artists in the upcoming 2013 Venice Biennale), Connie Butler, Lynn Cooke, and Ralph Rugoff, among others. Ambitious monographic exhibitions of work by outsider artists feature prominently in the programming of museums devoted to contemporary and modern art. Over the past two years, the Hamburger Bahnhof’s Secret Universe series has presented artists largely neglected by establishment art history, including outsider artists Horst Ademeit, Paul Laffoley, Morton Bartlett, and George Widener. Lynn Cooke recently mounted a James Castle exhibition at the Reina Sofia, a modern art museum. An area within outsider art that has appealed to contemporary curators and artists in recent years are the developmentally disabled artist studio and exhibition programs that are now global in reach. Matthew Higgs maintains an ongoing relationship with Bay Area art centers Creativity Explored and Creative Growth through White Columns programming (where he is the director) and through other venues (for instance, the Independent Curators International touring exhibition he co-curated with Larry Rinder entitled Create). Harrell Fletcher, through his own strain of socially-engaged art making, has collaborated with artists from the aforementioned centers and has assisted in creating opportunities for marginalized artists who have remained off the radar of the mainstream art world until he facilitated their recognition. The outcomes of Fletcher’s collaborative/facilitative methodology can be seen in Outsiderism with the video The Forbidden Zone and the drawings of Michael Patterson-Carver, who Fletcher brought to the attention of galleries and museums. Similarly, The Museum of Everything, a peripatetic collection and exhibition platform entirely premised on presenting work by “undiscovered,

4 unintentional and untrained artists” both living and dead, mounted an exhibition in 2011 of over 500 art works culled from developmentally disabled artist studios throughout the world.4 The Museum of Everything in many ways encapsulates the spirit of outsiderism in its open call enthusiasm to discover and present new art by outsiders, recognize the foundations of outsider art by collecting the canon alongside the unknown, and placing outsider art in dialogue with the contemporary by involving recognized curators, critics, and artists as interpreters and context providers. There are dangers in placing outsider art within modern and contemporary contexts as doing so can potentially eradicate the former’s radical difference and confirm the power of the center. If outsider art is subsumed by more mainstream categories, it falls into the abyss of , where art is judged entirely on formal terms removed from culture, locality, gender, race, class, etc. Acknowledging that art is always socially situated, it is nonetheless problematic to over-emphasize biography and social context at the expense of examining the actual work made by outsider artists. These are the dilemmas that I hope outsiderism as a burgeoning perspective within contemporary art will address, fostering bridges between extreme and extreme specificity. Outsider art, as fraught a term as it may be, still designates disruption, idiosyncrasy, and a difficulty in assimilation—the very attributes that make it so compelling and continually draw us into the work.

5 Alan Constable b. 1956, works in Melbourne Arts Project Australia Courtesy Arts of Project Australia, Melbourne

Untitled (White Concertina Camera), 2012 ceramic, 6 1/4 x 7 x 9 1/2 inches

Arts Project Australia is a studio and gallery in Melbourne which opened in 1974 to nurture and promote artists with intellectual disabilities, promoting their work within the wider spectrum of contemporary art. Alan Constable both paints and makes ceramics. His paintings are marked by a kaleidoscopic use of color and patterning often based on images of political events culled from newspapers and magazines. But it is the ceramic cameras that he is best known for. Constable has a life-long fascination with cameras. He made his first replica cameras from cardboard at the age of eight. The cameras range from obsolete accordion style devices to digital cameras and all share the noticeable imprint of the artist’s hands and fingers, as well as a pronounced enlargement of scale compared to their real counterparts. Constable is legally blind and has pinhole vision so must work close up during the creative process. For objects whose very existence are predicated on recording the visible, Constable’s cameras are created far more out of a sense of touch rather than sight.

6 Julian Martin b. 1969, works in Melbourne Arts Project Australia

Julian Martin’s pastel drawings exemplify an astute formal and are often based on real objects. In the works on display here, we can ascertain a coffee cup, an outline of a vaguely human form, a kangaroo-like animal, perhaps a key; even when Martin’s pastels seem to have no direct correspondence to things in the world, they maintain a representational sensibility. Martin’s stark, flat depictions, coupled with vibrant color choices, suggest a transformation of common objects into signs and symbols imbued with mystery and power. Courtesy Arts of Project Australia, Melbourne

Untitled (Abstracted Yellow Cross on Blue), 2010 pastel on paper, 15 x 11 1/4 inches

7 Christopher Mason b. 1976, works in Melbourne Arts Project Australia Courtesy Arts of Project Australia, Melbourne

Untitled (Nude with Hands on Breasts), 2009 ceramic, 11 x 9 3/4 x 7 inches

Christopher Mason paints, draws, and makes ceramics exploring a variety of subjects ranging from trains and aircraft to mermaids and voluptuous women. The latter are best represented in ceramic sculptures. These objects are particularly arresting for their unabashed honesty and their skillful yet exaggerated depiction of anatomical form. He sources the images on which he bases his sculptures from internet sites showcasing the eroticism of large women. Mason’s fixation on the corpulent female form can be viewed as either

8 a welcome celebration of an often disparaged body type, perhaps a progressive gesture of gender politics, or an idiosyncratic fetish. It is the gray zone that his work inhabits that makes his curvaceous clay forms resonate so strongly.

Lisa Reid b. 1975, works in Melbourne Arts Project Australia

Lisa Reid translates imagery from old family photographs; CD, record, and DVD covers; and images of celebrities from the popular press into fractured, patchwork-like representational paintings, utilizing a self-devised method resembling paint by numbers. Reid begins by drawing outlines in conte pencil on paper or canvas which she then patiently fills in with color—a process that is often very time consuming. Reid’s methodology of creating work based on existing imagery resulting in something radically original is reminiscent of the San Francisco artist Jess, whose Translation Series of paintings were based on found and personal photographs, as well as vintage printed material. Courtesy Arts of Project Australia, Melbourne

Untitled (scene from the Wild One), 2010 gouache on paper, 11 x 15 inches

9 Knicoma Frederick b. 1980, works in Wilmington, DE The Creative Vision Factory Courtesy Creative The of Vison Factory, Wilmington

Untitled (Lactating Woman with Stone Man), 2008 colored pencil and correction fluid on paper, 11 x 8 1/2 inches

Knicoma Frederick is an artist working with The Creative Vision Factory, Wilmington, Delaware, an art center founded in 2011 to provide individuals with behavioral health disorders an opportunity for self-expression, empowerment, and recovery through its studio and exhibition program.

10 Comprised of drawings realized in a variety of media since 2007, Frederick’s graphic novels confront the evils he sees lurking in today’s world and offers a range of redemptive solutions, often in the form of a hero equipped with a specialized technology. He has published twelve books in the past year and all are available on www.blurb.com. Frederick believes the messages informing his art assist others in their journey to self-awareness and enlightenment, “to help stop the things that happen over and over again in people’s lives—to break the cycle.”5 The central protagonist of 80bit, his first published book which is in the collection of the Delaware Art Museum, is an artist-marine named Intrafire Neutralizer, who devises a weapon called the designator that enables the oppressed to truly see the world, to discern the real from the fake in order to live a more just existence. In the chapter introductions to 80bit, Frederick clearly states his position on the role his art plays in making his audience better people by presenting a series of ideas that read collectively as a manifesto, including statements like “Draw against what destroys one’s character and uplifts another;” and “Uplift a person, don’t be quick to do evil with your art unless the reason is strong.” Frederick’s belief in art’s role as a means for social and personal change does not mean he relies on stock saccharine imagery or clichés. Like Christopher Mason’s ceramic female nudes, Frederick’s drawings of females lactating or giving birth to valentine hearts, as well as his ongoing exploration of his love of women’s toenail art, reveals an underlying interest in sex that might cause some to wonder about his moral intentions. However, we certainly cannot deny that Frederick’s deeply personal take on sexuality as one of the possible paths of redemption transcends the contrived themes of traditional comic art and offers his audience something authentically inventive.

Gregory Blackstock b. 1946, works in Seattle, WA

Blackstock has been making drawings reminiscent of old Sears and Roebuck catalogue pages and natural history classification illustration since 1986, when he began featuring his work in the Washington Athletic Club monthly newsletter. He was employed at the club as a pot washer for over twenty-five years, retiring in 2001. His desire to render and classify things meaningful

11 to him is likely a result of his autism. Blackstock makes sense of a chaotic world—a chaos that is further exacerbated by his condition—by delineating it into orderly systems of representation. He calls the drawings “collections;” Courtesy of Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle

The East Indies Flags, 2012 Graphite, colored pencil and permanent marker on paper, 24 x 22 1/2 inches his detailed observations, comparisons, and categorizations are drawn entirely from memory. The drawings on view in Outsiderism form just a small portion of a much larger corpus of work. Blackstock has made over two hundred drawings since beginning the series over twenty five years ago, a dizzyingly disparate range of works addressing subjects including monsters of the deep, noisemakers, Irish joys, historic intercontinental homes, safety signs of American National Parks, Northwest holiday novelties, state prisons, state birds, and World War II bombers, among many others. The Major Foreign Alphabets, seen here, points to another interest of Blackstock’s—language acquisition. Apparently, he speaks several foreign languages.

12 Harrell Fletcher b. 1967, works in Portland, OR (in collaboration with David Jarvey, Chris Johanson, Elizabeth Meyer, and Alexis Van Hurkman)

Harrell Fletcher and Chris Johanson have collaborated with artists from Creativity Explored, a Bay Area art center for artists with developmental disabilities, on several occasions producing posters, publications, and in the case of The Forbidden Zone, featured in this exhibition, video. David Jarvey, an artist from Creativity Explored, conceived of and stars in the video, which addresses his interest in an early Star Trek episode. Jarvey, who has Down’s Syndrome, identifies with a character from that episode, Captain Christopher Pike, who has been left paralyzed, badly scarred, and mute during a rescue mission gone awry, and wants to travel to the Forbidden Planet, Talos 4, where he can live with the illusion of being normal once again. As part of the production, Jarvey and Johanson were filmed against a blue screen and superimposed onto footage from the actual Star Trek episode. Courtesy Harrell of Fletcher

The Forbidden Zone, 2000 (video still) Color video, open edition, 12 minutes, 46 seconds

13 Paul Laffoley b. 1940, works Boston, MA Courtesy of Kent Fine Art, New York

Geochronmechane: The Time Machine From the Earth, 1990 Silkscreen on rag paper, 32 x 32 inches, edition 31/75

For nearly 50 years, Paul Laffoley has dedicated himself to studying and interpreting the perplexing complexity of the world, engaging subjects as varied as architecture, literature, scientific theory, time travel, extraterrestrial communication, the Occult, early Christianity, art history, and engineering, among many others. Laffoley distills and diagrams an amalgam of ideas into works of art resulting in dense, thought provoking paintings and prints. He incorporates concentric circular forms and boxes as containers for both painstakingly conceived images and hand-applied vinyl text that accompany

14 and explain the strong imagery. The works function as the visual equivalent to what Laffoley calls thought forms—physical manifestations of thought that have volume and occupy space. According to Elizabeth Ferrer, who curated a retrospective on Laffoley in 1999, “Found in many religious and belief systems from ancient India through the and the Spiritualist movement of the 19th century, thought forms are conceived as a link between the abstractions of the human mind and the concrete structures of physical existence.”6 Laffoley is not self-taught as he received a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in classics, attended a number of architectural schools, and is a registered architect. However, his project is uniquely singular and does not readily fit into ideas associated with contemporary art. Laffoley’s work is not critical, not tentative or uncertain, not self-referential, and not ironic. His propositions explore universal questions of human existence and belief systems—unfashionable investigations within contemporary practice which tends to emphasize the specific or personal over the universal. In fact, his description of his paintings as “symbol-myths” suggests a religious experience, all the more “outside” the usual purview of contemporary art:

Symbol-myths are energy portals…Being in the presence of them is like facing something totally beyond yourself. They appear as beings of greater maturity, aliveness, and internal complexity than you. Their capacity to generate an energy of a different and more intense nature that you are capable of generating elicits the classic sublime response, which transcends beauty: joy combined with horror at the rush of the infinite.7

Michael Patterson-Carver b. 1958, lives across several West Coast cities

Self-taught artist Michael Patterson-Carver draws images of political protest based on historical and current events, as well as a range of scenarios with conspiratorial overtones that revolve around government operatives spying and infiltrating the activities of the activist left or controlling the agendas of myriad right-leaning groups. An activist himself, Patterson-Carver’s art came to the attention of Harrell Fletcher when he encountered the then homeless artist selling his work on the street outside a Portland, Oregon grocery store. Fletcher, known for his collaborative art practice often based on working with

15 artists ignored by the mainstream contemporary art world, was immediately intrigued by Patterson-Carver’s work and entered into a dialogue with him. Fletcher first purchased drawings for his own collection and then encouraged White Columns, an alternative space in New York, to purchase a group for an exhibition there. Fletcher also introduced the work to Laurel Gitlen, who now represents Patterson-Carver, and Fletcher selected him for inclusion in the Altoids Curiously Strong Mint collection, for which Patterson-Carver was awarded a substantial monetary prize and an exhibition at the New Museum. The flat, illustrative clarity and candy-colored hues of the drawings suggest children’s book illustrations and in several works shown here, children are indeed the focus. Other works like Arab Spring and Equal Pay for Equal Work feature protesters galvanized by respective causes; their inspirational moralism is similarly inline with what one might expect from a children’s story. Some works, however, are not uplifting in the least, depicting tax-cutting haters of public education and anti-abortion zealots triumphant in front of a boarded up Planned Parenthood facility. Suppression of Dissent—With Plausible Deniability features a self-portrait of the artist in the foreground as an autonomous, free- thinking individual untethered to the right’s puppet strings. Courtesy York Laurel Gitlen, New of

Arab Spring, 2011 Ink, pencil and watercolor on paper, 14 1/4 x 20 inches

16 1 Thomas Crow, “Folk into Art: A Phenomenon of Class and Culture in Twentieth-Century America,” in Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular, eds. Andrew Perchuk and Rani Singh (Los Angeles: the Getty Research Institute, 2010), p. 208. It should be stressed here that trained artists have often been responsible for sparking interest in or facilitating the recognition of outsider artists. Chicago artists Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson, for example, were instrumental in bringing wider attention to the work of Martin Ramirez and Joseph Yoakum. Los Angeles artist Jim Shaw has celebrated unknown visionaries in his collection of thrift store paintings. Harrell Fletcher, included in this exhibition, has collaborated with self-taught and developmentally disabled artists as part of his artistic practice.

2 For an analysis of the different ways outsider art evolved in America and Europe, see Lynn Cooke, “Orthodoxies Undermined,” in “Great and Mighty Things”: Outsider Art in the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection, eds. Ann Percy and Cara Zimmerman (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2013), pp. 204–208.

3 Jonathan Griffin, “Frames of Reference,” Frieze 150 (October 2012), p. 199.

4 http://www.museumofeverything.com/site/

5 “Knicoma Frederick—WPIZ Master” http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TiUrP6mx0nw

6 Elizabeth Ferrer, “Foreword,” in Architectonic Thought Forms: Gedankenexperimente in Zombie , A Survey of the Visionary Art of Paul Laffoley Spanning Four Decades, 1967-1999, to the Brink of the Bauharoque (Austin Museum of Art, 1999), p. 7.

7 Laffoley quoted in J.W. Mahoney, “Paul Laffoley’s Transmodernism,” in Architectonic Thought Forms, p. 21.

17 OUTSIDERISM Untitled, 2011 Glory News Article from the April 11–June 8, 2013 Ceramic Series Information 1600, 2012 5 5/8 x 9 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches Marker and pen on paper 11 x 8 1/2 inches Works in the Exhibition: Untitled (White Concertina Camera), 2012 Untitled (Elaborately Painted GREGORY BLACKSTOCK Ceramic Pedicure) from the Series 80 Courtesy of Greg Kucera 6 1/4 x 7 x 9 1/2 inches Bit, 2008 Gallery, Seattle Colored pencil on paper 11 x 8 1/2 inches 2-Shot Repeater Aerial Bomb HARRELL FLETCHER, DAVID Color Perspectives, 2008 JARVEY, CHRIS JOHANSON, ELIZABETH MEYER AND Untitled (Lactating Woman Graphite, colored crayon and ALEXIS VAN HURKMAN with Stone Man), 2008 permanent marker on paper Courtesy of Harrell Fletcher Colored pencil and 33 1/2 x 13 1/2 correction fluid on paper The Forbidden Zone, 2000 11 x 8 1/2 inches The East Indies Flags, 2012 Color video Graphite, colored pencil and 12 minutes, 46 seconds permanent marker on paper PAUL LAFFOLEY open edition 24 x 22 1/2 inches Courtesy of Kent Fine Art, New York KNICOMA FREDERICK The Historic F Outboard Courtesy of The Raceboat Eqp’t of the 1950s- Pistis Sophia, 2004–2006 Creative Vision Factory, 1970s Southern-To-Pacific Oil, acrylic, vinyl lettering, Coast US Region, 2006 Wilmington india ink, photo-collage Graphite, colored crayon and on linen canvas, velvet Untitled (Couple Painting/ drapes, magic mirror (two permanent marker on paper Beach Scene) from the Series 48 x 24 inches way mirror with electrical 80 Bit, 2010 components) The Major Foreign Alphabets, Acrylic on canvas 104 x 59 3/4 x 6 1/2 inches 2007 36 x 24 inches Graphite and permanent Copenhagen Cat Unitled (Couple Painting/ Paradox, 2008 marker on paper Interior) from the Series 80 25 x 11 1/2 inches Oil, acrylic, ink, vinyl Bit, 2010 lettering; wood frame Acrylic on canvas 37 1/2 x 37 1/2 inches ALAN CONSTABLE 36 x 24 inches Courtesy of Kent Fine Art, Courtesy of Arts Project Australia, Melbourne Untitled (Palm Tree Toes) Ne w York from the Series 80 Bit, 2007 Geochronmechane: The Time Untitled (Gun Metal Gray Acrylic on canvas Machine From the Earth, 1990 SLR), 2007 24 x 18 inches Silkscreen on rag paper Ceramic 32 x 32 inches 6 x 7 3/4 x 5 1/4 inches Untitled (Candle Army Eyes) from the Series 80 Bit, 2006 edition 31/75 Blue Kodak Trimlite, 2009 Acrylic on canvas The Parturient Blessed Ceramic 24 x 18 inches Mortality of Physiological 3 x 91/2 x 4 1/2 inches Untitled (Hearts and Hands Dimensionality: Aleph-Null Untitled (Green Digital Mural) from the Series Number, 2004–2006 Camera), 2009 Information 1600, 2012 Digital print on Epson Ceramic Marker and pen on paper Ultra Smooth 100 4 x 6 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches 11 x 8 1/2 inches acid-free rag paper 17 7/8 x 24 7/8 inches AP JULIAN MARTIN CHRISTOPHER MASON Equal Pay for Equal Courtesy of Arts Project Courtesy of Arts Project Work, 2011 Australia, Melbourne Australia, Melbourne Ink, pencil and watercolor on paper Untitled (Abstracted Animal Untitled (Nude with Hands 15 x 20 inches on Blue), 2010 on Breasts), 2009 Pastel on paper Ceramic Republican Agenda 15 x 11 1/4 inches 11 x 9 3/4 x 7 inches Victory, 2011 Ink, pencil and watercolor Untitled (Mauve and Green Untitled (Seated Nude on paper Shapes), 2010 Woman), 2010 14 1/4 x 20 inches Pastel on paper Ceramic 15 x 11 1/4 inches 8 x 10 x 11 1/4 inches Women’s Rights in Kansas, 2011 Untitled (Abstracted Green Untitled (Nude with Ink, pencil and watercolor Shapes on Maroon), 2010 Dummy), 2010 on paper Pastel on paper Ceramic 14 1/4 x 20 inches 15 x 11 1/4 inches 5 x 7 x 5 1/4 inches Arab Spring, 2011 Untitled (Purple and Green MICHAEL PATTERSON- Ink, pencil and watercolor Coffee Cup on Purple), 2010 CARVER on paper Pastel on paper Courtesy of Laurel Gitlen, 14 1/4 x 20 inches 15 x 11 1/4 inches New York; and Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels Untitled (Yellow and Red on LISA REID Royal Blue), 2010 We’ve Got ’Em Courtesy of Arts Project Pastel on paper Surrounded, 2012 Australia, Melbourne 15 x 11 1/4 inches Ink, pencil and watercolor Great Aunt Edna, 2003 Untitled (Purple Shape on on paper Gouache on paper Black), 2010 12 x 16 inches 21 1/2 x 14 3/4 inches Pastel on paper Suppression of Dissent—With 15 x 11 1/4 inches Untitled (Mirror Image from Plausible Deniability, 2012 Mills and Boon in Blue), 2005 Untitled (Abstracted Yellow Ink, pencil and watercolor Acrylic on canvas Cross on Blue), 2010 on paper 19 1/2 x 19 1/2 x 1 inch Pastel on paper 9 x 12 inches 15 x 11 1/4 inches James Stewart, 2009 Lemonade School Fund, 2012 Acrylic on paper Untitled (Abstracted Orange Ink, pencil and watercolor 15 x 11 inches Shape and Khaki), 2010 on paper Pastel on paper 9 x 12 inches Untitled (Scene from The 15 x 11 1/4 inches Wild One), 2010 Ramona and Joey, 2012 Gouache on paper Untitled (White on Ink, pencil and watercolor 11 x 15 inches Cream), 2010 on paper Pastel on paper 12 x 9 inches 15 x 11 1/4 inches High School Protest, 2012 Untitled (Green Object on Ink, pencil and watercolor Mauve), 2011 on paper Pastel on paper 12 x 9 inches 15 x 11 1/4 inches Acknowledgments

Fleisher/Ollman is indebted to all of the artists for agreeing to participate in Outsiderism. Their individual creativity and disparate range of approaches has made for a unique exhibition that will surely be appreciated by our audience both established and new. The artists’ representatives were instrumental in the planning and realization of the exhibition from early dialogue to registration and consignment. We are particularly thankful to Sim Luttin and Penny Hunt, Arts Project Australia; Doug Walla and Maia Peck, Kent Fine Art; Greg Kucera, Greg Kucera Gallery, Inc.; Laurel Gitlen and Chris Aque, Laurel Gitlen Gallery; Michael Kalmbach, The Creative Vision Factory; and Jalal Jemison for expediting Harrell Fletcher’s video for inclusion. I would like to acknowledge the support of John Ollman for believing in Outsiderism from the very beginning and his thoughtful suggestions. I am very thankful to our exceptional staff at Fleisher/Ollman whose dedication and input were critical in making the exhibition a success: Claire Iltis, Doug Matlaga, and Matthew Lucash. Their resolve in focusing on the show during a particularly stressful time—the gallery’s relocation and renovation—was all the more noteworthy given the complexities of balancing a near endless array of tasks.

Alex Baker Director, Fleisher/Ollman Published in conjunction with the exhibition:

OUTSIDERISM April 18–June 8, 2013

Fleisher/Ollman 1216 Arch Street, 5A Philadelphia, PA 19103 215-545-7562 www.fleisherollman.com

Designed by Claire Iltis